


no need to worry, I am just another monster

by oneworldaway



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Sarah Jane Adventures
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 18:16:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1034847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneworldaway/pseuds/oneworldaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Melody Pond makes a friend; River Song hasn't forgotten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no need to worry, I am just another monster

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this a couple of years ago, but I fixed it up a little before posting! Sorry about all the character tags for River, but I figured I might as well tag every regeneration appearing in this story. Title nabbed from "Of Greetings And Goodbyes" by AFI.

She knows right away that this isn’t where she’s supposed to be, somehow. Her parents should be around their mid-twenties, which sounds quite reasonable, but something is telling her it’s not quite right. _Not now_. She’s overshot her target, wherever it is.

But she can’t try again just yet. She hasn’t stopped to rest in who knows how long (she knows, exactly how long, down to the millisecond, but she’d rather not think about it); she needs to close her eyes for a little while. And, as her stomach reminds her with a soft growl, she could stand to eat.

Only she doesn’t have any money, and she doesn’t know exactly where to go, and she’d really rather not be questioned about why she’s wandering the streets and get carted off to a children’s home _again_. Really, running away from the last one made for a rather dull evening.

She takes a chance and starts walking anyway, and before too long spots a certain infamous pair of golden arches. She knows this place gets shut down in 2315, once the human race sees some figures about how much bigger their population would be had they not been poisoning themselves for centuries, but she’s picked up the habit of scanning a foreign street for its insignia, anyway. And it tends to be cheap.

Still, even cheap things require money to be purchased, and this poses a problem. Scanning the area outside the restaurant, she notices a girl sitting alone on a bench, pulling an order of french fries ( _chips, here_ , she reminds herself) out of a paper bag. She looks a few years older than Melody currently does (but in actuality must be a bit younger), and there’s something about her that makes Melody feel she can trust her. ( _Trust_ , she wonders? _Really?_ Melody Pond can’t afford to trust anyone. But she senses something about this girl that she can’t quite put into words for herself.)

The girl looks up as soon as Melody sits down on the other end of the bench. “Hello,” she says to Melody, with an air of innocence somehow younger than her apparent years. It piques Melody’s interest.

She smiles sincerely at the girl. “Hi,” she replies. “I’m Melody.”

“Sky.”

“You’re not here alone, are you?” she asks the girl, noting that she seems far too...childlike, somehow, to be out on her own.

“Oh, no, my mum’s still inside,” she says. “But...shouldn’t I be asking you the same? You’re younger than I am.”

Melody isn’t afraid. She left fear behind with that old body in the 1960s, and she hasn’t been afraid of anything since. She isn’t scared to travel through time, to anywhere in the world, without anybody’s permission. Melody Pond doesn’t need permission. But this isn’t exactly something she can explain to just anybody - though she has a strange feeling that this girl just might get it.

She settles for a compromise. “Can you keep a secret, Sky?” Sky appears to hesitate for a moment, looks unsure, but she nods anyway. “The truth is, I’ve gotten lost. I’m trying to get back to my parents.”

Genuine worry flashes across Sky’s face. “Shouldn’t you go to the police? They can help you find your parents.”

“I can’t!” Melody says quickly. “The police can’t help me find my parents. They’ll only help someone else find me, and I can’t let that happen, because that someone wants to hurt me.” It’s more honest than she’s ever been with anyone. She isn’t even sure why she’s saying all this, but something is telling her it’s alright.

Sky seems to accept this explanation, though she looks troubled. “I think I understand,” she says. “Before my mum found me, there were people who wanted to hurt me too. They wanted to use me to hurt other people, actually.” Melody blinks. “But I wouldn’t let them, because my mum taught me that that would be wrong.”

For a moment, Melody almost wonders if this older-younger girl could actually be some other version of her. Her next regeneration. But the way Sky talks, and that innocence about her...no, there’s no way they’re the same person. Still, this girl just might be the one person in the universe who understands her life, and out of all the places she could have wound up, Melody was here with her.

(She wonders if that’s what _her_ mum is going to teach her. That hurting people is wrong. But she’s been taught a lot of things already.)

Melody shakes herself out of her thoughts. “Yeah, so that’s why I can’t go to the police. I know my parents are nearby, actually, but I’ve been looking for them for so long now. I’ve just gotten a bit tired.”

“We could help you,” says Sky, “my mum and I. We help people sometimes. All the time, really! And we wouldn’t have to go to the police.”

“No!” says Melody, inadvertently raising her voice a little. “You can’t! She wouldn’t understand, not like you.”

“My mum understands a lot of things. More than you could imagine.”

“Not something like this. Please, just don’t tell her, okay?” Sky concedes. 

She’s forgotten all about why she stopped here in the first place, and she doesn’t really care anymore. She’s not going to hustle Sky for money. Not the one person in the universe who she actually has something in common with. She’s truly surprised when Sky shoves the paper bag into her lap. “Oh, no, that’s okay,” says Melody, moving to hand it back to her, but Sky’s not having any of it.

“You’re going to need to eat something. Let me do this much for you, at least. Please, Melody.”

She looks at Sky, still unsure, and Sky only hands Melody her drink, too. “I’ll just tell my mum there was someone who needed it more than I did,” she says. She turns her head and gasps; Melody follows her gaze to see a woman striding toward the restaurant doors, on her way out. “My mum is coming, quick! Go!” And then it’s Melody’s turn to give in.

“Thank you, Sky,” she says, getting up and beginning to run back to the street.

“You’re welcome,” says Sky with a grin. “Good luck!” She waves until her mum walks out, and Melody Pond disappears.

~

Mels texts Amy that she’ll be staying over at an old boyfriend’s place in London tonight, assuring her that she’ll be back for their evening movie date tomorrow. She’s already on the train watching the scenery go by, ten minutes out of Leadworth. She hasn’t had this sort of a day in awhile - in years, really. And she’s never done something _quite_ like this. She feels oddly solemn, and almost a little sad. But not afraid. Never afraid.

The street looks exactly as she remembers it. And there are those golden arches. Her diet is really one of the worse habits she’s picked up from humankind, and she can only hope her superior physiology can process a Big Mac better than a human’s can, because there aren’t a whole lot of other great options on those late, drunken nights.

Her stomach rumbles softly in memory of a far worse hunger, years before and right now. And then she sees the small figures on the bench and something else bubbles up inside of her.

She waits a reasonable distance away, in the right direction. She won’t even need to do any real approaching, because _she’ll_ do most of the work - the other her. The younger her. The smaller girl gets up and comes running down the sidewalk, and Mels steps out in front of her.

“Come,” she says simply. “Come sleep. I know a place.” Her younger self eyes her suspiciously, and she follows her script. “You’ll find them after you sleep. You need to rest now.”

Melody tilts her head, and narrows her eyes slightly. “So I _do_ make it to my teen years in this body, huh?”

Mels smiles just a little. “Come.”

~

The Doctor’s all excited to tell her some of his favourite stories about his old friends, but in the end it’s River who’s able to tell him something new: that Sarah Jane Smith now has a daughter. He is temporarily stunned, but River’s only recently figured it out herself, thanks to something Martha told Amy that got back to her. It wasn’t any wonder she’d felt she could trust that girl on the bench; they’d had more in common than she ever could have known.

He wants to fly to Ealing and have a celebration right away, but just then an alarm starts blaring throughout the TARDIS, and suddenly they have more pressing matters to attend to. After the adventure they get swept up in, the Doctor seems to have forgotten about visiting his old friend for the moment. But River can’t forget about that girl, until finally she breaks out of Stormcage again a few days later.

~

The woman standing in the Smiths’ front doorway has some truly impressive hair, Sky notes. There’s also a funny sort of smile on her face, and she’s holding a paper bag in one hand and a fountain drink in the other. “Hello, Sky,” she says. She holds the fast food out to her. “I owed you this.”

~

Luke and Sarah Jane arrive home to find Sky eating chips alone in the living room, an empty wine glass sitting on the coffee table.

“Sky, what’s been going on here?” asks Sarah Jane.

“My friend the Doctor’s wife came over,” says Sky serenely. She smiles as she eats another chip.


End file.
